email-safety

name	email-safety
description	Mandatory contract for sending email/outreach from any AI (Claude, Gemini, Antigravity, Codex). Read this before invoking any send command. Disable-model-invocation false — ANY model that sends mail must read this first.
disable-model-invocation	false
triggers	["email safety","use email safety","run email safety"]
tier	specialized

Email Safety — One Rulebook for Every AI

You are about to invoke an email or outreach command. Before you do, read this entire file. It applies to every AI that drives this repo — Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, Claude Haiku, Gemini 3 Flash, Gemini 3 Pro, Antigravity native chat, Codex, GPT-anything, and any future model.

Sending email is the single most expensive thing you can do wrong here. A bad send burns a real client, a real reputation, and a real revenue stream. There is no "undo".

The one rule

All outbound goes through scripts/integrations/send_gateway.py. Period.

If you find yourself reaching for smtplib, the Gmail API, the SES API, Mailgun, SendGrid, or any other transport — stop. The gateway is the only safe path. It enforces:

• CASL compliance (suppression list, footer, List-Unsubscribe headers)
• Per-channel cooldown (email 72h, IG 48h, LinkedIn 72h, phone 168h)
• Daily caps (email 50, IG 30, LinkedIn 20, phone 15)
• Hourly caps + per-domain caps + bounce circuit breaker
• A draft critic (adversarial AI review of the body before send)
• Idempotency via the lead_interactions ledger

Skipping it skips all of that.

When in doubt, dry-run

Every send command accepts --dry-run. The gateway returns {"status": "dry_run"} with all gates evaluated but no actual send.

# Preview an email without sending
python scripts/integrations/email_engine.py send \
  --to [e-mail] \
  --subject "Test" \
  --body "Hello" \
  --dry-run

# Same for templates
python scripts/integrations/email_engine.py send-template \
  --template-id <uuid> \
  --to [e-mail] \
  --vars '{"first_name":"Alex"}' \
  --dry-run

# And for outreach
python scripts/outreach_engine.py send \
  --lead-id <uuid> \
  --dry-run

If you are reasoning about whether a send is safe: always dry-run first. The cost is one extra command. The benefit is catching the failure before it lands in a paying client's inbox.

The killswitch (multi-AI safety)

Set BRAVO_FORCE_DRY_RUN=1 in your environment, and every send call — no matter which script, no matter which AI invoked it, no matter what flags they passed — becomes a dry-run. The gateway honors this BEFORE suppression / cooldown / DB lookups, so it works even when Supabase is unreachable.

Use this when:

• You are running a less-capable model that might call the wrong tool (Gemini 3 Flash, Antigravity native chat, etc.)
• You are in a sandbox or test environment
• You are debugging and don't want any side effects
• You are doing a multi-step workflow where one step might fire a send prematurely

# In bash / zsh / git-bash
export BRAVO_FORCE_DRY_RUN=1

# In PowerShell
$env:BRAVO_FORCE_DRY_RUN = "1"

# In a single command (bash)
BRAVO_FORCE_DRY_RUN=1 python scripts/integrations/email_engine.py send --to ... --subject ... --body ...

To resume real sends, unset the variable. There is no override flag — the killswitch is intentionally one-way: set it on, you get safety; you must explicitly unset it to send.

What "messed up the emails" usually means

When a session reports that an AI got an email wrong, the cause is almost always one of these:

1. Wrong recipient — AI used a placeholder, a test email, or a name instead of an address. Mitigation: the gateway requires to_email matching <x>@<y>.<tld> shape. Bad addresses fail fast with status: error.
2. Wrong template — AI hallucinated a template ID or template name. Mitigation: send-template requires a UUID. Hallucinated UUIDs miss the DB and fail loud.
3. Bypassed cooldown — AI sent twice to the same lead in 30 minutes. Mitigation: the gateway enforces 72h email cooldown architecturally. Cannot be bypassed from inside the process.
4. AI-slop content — body reads like a chatbot apologized for itself. Mitigation: the draft critic blocks slop patterns + uses a Haiku adversarial review.
5. Wrong brand — sent as oasis when it should have been conaugh_mckenna. Mitigation: --brand flag is required and validated against BRAND_IDENTITY keys.

If any of these slip through, the gateway is the right place to add a new gate, not your invocation script. Bring the failure to the gateway team (= file an issue) — don't paper over it with a wrapper.

Common safe invocations

# 1. Preview a one-off email
python scripts/integrations/email_engine.py send \
  --to [e-mail] \
  --subject "Quick thought for Northern HVAC" \
  --body "Hi Alex, ..." \
  --brand oasis \
  --dry-run

# 2. Send a known template (real send)
python scripts/integrations/email_engine.py send-template \
  --template-id 7e3a... \
  --to [e-mail] \
  --vars '{"first_name":"Alex","company":"Northern HVAC"}' \
  --brand oasis

# 3. Run a nurture sequence step (real send for step 0)
python scripts/integrations/email_engine.py sequence run <sequence_uuid> \
  --lead-id <lead_uuid>

# 4. Send a personalized outreach with calendar invite
python scripts/outreach_engine.py send \
  --lead-id <lead_uuid> \
  --meeting-datetime 2026-04-25T14:00:00 \
  --duration 30

Common UNSAFE patterns to avoid

# ❌ NEVER do this — bypasses every gate
import smtplib
smtp = smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", 465)
smtp.login(...)
smtp.sendmail(...)

# ❌ NEVER do this — no CASL footer, no cooldown, no ledger
import requests
requests.post("https://api.mailgun.net/...", data={...})

# ❌ NEVER do this — bypasses the draft critic
from email_engine import _send_via_smtp_directly  # (function does not exist for a reason)

# ✅ ALWAYS do this
from send_gateway import send as gateway_send
gw = gateway_send(
    channel="email",
    agent_source="<your_script_name>",
    to_email="...",
    subject="...",
    body_text="...",
    brand="oasis",
    intent="commercial",   # or "transactional" for confirmations
    dry_run=False,         # set True until you've previewed
)

Verification

scripts/email_doctor.py is a non-destructive check that any AI can run before invoking a real send. It:

• Confirms the gateway responds
• Confirms BRAVO_FORCE_DRY_RUN=1 actually flips behavior
• Lists every send subcommand and confirms each accepts --dry-run
• Checks template shapes in Supabase (link counts, placeholders)

python scripts/email_doctor.py

Run this at the start of any session that will involve outbound. If it fails, do not send. Fix the underlying issue first.

TL;DR

1. All outbound goes through send_gateway.send().
2. --dry-run previews safely. Use it.
3. BRAVO_FORCE_DRY_RUN=1 is the killswitch. Set it when in doubt.
4. scripts/email_doctor.py confirms the safety surface is intact.
5. AI-slop content is caught by the draft critic — but you should still read your draft before approving.

You're a smart AI. Act like the email is going to a paying client at $2,500/month MRR — because it might be.

Related

• [[skills/INDEX.md]]
• [[brain/CAPABILITIES]]